Want some advice from someone who has recently been through the M&A process? Location Labs was recently acquired by antivirus company AVG for $220 million. The founder of Location Labs, Tasso Roumeliotis, shared some insights on issues to consider when pursuing a sale or merger of your company in an article on VentureBeat.com "The 5 things you can't forget when preparing for M&A".

I concur with all of his comments except for one: he says that your VP of Finance will need to be extremely good:strategically savvy, incredibly organized, and willing to work 100 hours a week for 3 to 4 months straight. That very well may be true for companies the size of Location Labs - particularly if they did not use an investment banker to help with the deal. However, Codiligent takes on smaller clients, usually under $20 million in annual revenue. So while we do hope that clients will be well organized and that the person dealing with assembling financial information will work hard, as the intermediary we usually play the role that Tasso describes of financial modeling, negotiations, term-setting, and other transaction aspects that fall under the financial category. In fact, some of our clients' key financial persons are not aware that the owner is selling the business until the end of the deal.

It is accurate that this financial role, which Codiligent primarily plays for its clients, is extremely time consuming. Many would-be business sellers mistakenly assume that their investment banker or business broker is simply matching up a buyer and seller, and does little else. If you are using a high-quality intermediary the work they do behind the scenes is substantial. That's not to say that there aren't plenty of business brokers and investment bankers that take short-cuts and don't do all that they should - but that's why it's important to select the right broker.